Summary: The breastplate of righteousness. Faith our trust in God and love our choosing to share with others the hope of the gospel. Paul says, Put it on!!! We find out why and how it protects us from the advances and attacks of the enemy in this message.

Intro: When you read about the breastplate of righteousness you find a discussion and disagreement about whether the righteousness that Paul is speaking about is imputed righteousness or imparted righteousness. Imputed righteousness is what we get when we trust Jesus as Lord and Savior and are saved and sealed with God’s Holy Spirit. This is how we will gain access to God’s heaven.

When Jesus says, “Why should I let you into my heaven?” The right answer is because of the shed blood and finished work of Jesus. I trust Him and accept His forgiveness of my sins. That gives us a right standing before God.

Imparted righteousness is what we receive as we daily allow the Holy Spirit to live in us and guide our decisions, desire, emotions and thinking.

Paul gives clear teaching in this letter that I believe settles the discussion. In Ephesians 4:24 Paul uses the word righteousness to speak about the new man (imputed) that is created when we trust Jesus as Savior and confess Him as Lord. In 5:9 he uses it as righteous behavior. So according to this very letter it is our trust in Jesus that works itself out in behavior empowered by the Holy Spirit controlled by the will of God.

If you remember last week we said that we don’t need more legislation, taxation, immigration, population control or education, we need transformation. So what then is the problem? If you understand the gospel of Jesus Christ the heart of the problem is the problem of the heart!

The gospel is good news. In the gospel we hear the bad news about the condition of our heart and the good news that God takes care of our heart condition. Listen to the words of Jesus!

Matthew 15:10-11 “And he called the people to him and said to them, “Hear and understand: 11 it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” HCSB (Offense of the Pharisees and the ignorance of the disciples) (Read the rest of the paragraph)

The problem of a dirty sinful heart is taken care of at the cross of Jesus. William Cowper wrote an amazing Hymn called there is a fountain the first verse goes like this,

There is a fountain filled with blood,

Drawn from Immanuel’s veins,

And sinners plunged beneath that flood

Lose all their guilty stains. (So the gospel or good news about Jesus Christ tells us clearly that our dirty sinful hearts can become clean when washed with the blood of Jesus!!) Any heart or inner person offered freely to Jesus will be made new and cleansed!!

So where does the breastplate of righteousness come in?

I. The breastplate: Our standing before God

When we turn our lives over to Jesus and confess Him as Lord we receive a new heart in theological terms this is called regeneration. This is also called imputed righteousness.

The breastplate of righteousness. Faith our trust in God and love our choosing to share with others the hope of the gospel. Paul says, Put it on!!! We find out why and how it protects us from the advances and attacks of the enemy in this message.

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